Momentum (an IWSG/Indie Life post)

Back when I was in college, my best friend got married... um, actually, that happened several times. The pattern tended to be

• get best friend
• best friend meets girl
• best friend marries girl
• best friend moves away
• repeat
• (Yes, I got to play groomsman four or five times.)

Anyway, my best friend got married (this was the last of these to happen before I finished school). Someone gave him a refrigerator, I think? Some large appliance, at any rate. Maybe it was a washer and dryer. It doesn't really matter; just insert whatever large appliance you prefer into this scenario. Something that was too big for one person to easily handle. So, yeah, he called me to help him move it. (Yeah, it was used, whatever it was.)

It's important to note, at this point, that I'm a pretty strong guy. I have often been the friend that was called to help people move things or whatever because I was the strongest person they knew. So he called me. Not a problem. You know, the whole best friend thing and all. Well, plus, the only other person we knew that was good at that kind of thing was notoriously flaky about actually showing up to help out with things he'd said he'd help with (to be fair, it wasn't always his fault (but that's a different story)).

We went to the place, and we loaded the thing. He'd borrowed someone's pickup truck for the day. It was a mid-sized truck. White. No, the color's probably not important, but I do remember that, and I think I ought to get in all the facts that I remember, right? And we drove to his new place. A little house he and his brand spanking new wife were renting. Wait, forget that spanking comment. I rather doubt they were into that. Look, I knew the guy, not you, and I'm pretty sure that was not a thing for them, so just drop it, okay. I'm sorry I said anything. Sheesh! Minds, people!

What I should have said, anyway, was that we tried to drive to his new place. We got into viewing distance of his house, maybe 150 yards, and... the truck died. See, there was a rise in the road to accommodate the railroad tracks going through, a rise the height of which was only, maybe, three feet, and the truck couldn't make it over. We hit the hill, the truck made a weird noise, shuddered, and stopped... for just a moment, before it rolled back the short distance it had gone up. If only we had known that it wasn't going to restart, he could have jammed on the brake, but we didn't know, and it wouldn't start.

I am not a car guy.
Neither was he.

But we could see his house. And the truck was in the road. So we did the kind of thing that you do when you're young: We pushed the truck.
Or, rather, I pushed the truck. Because someone has to have a hand on the steering wheel, and the most help that that person is in a situation like that is that he is not in the truck. I pushed the truck... UP the hill. Yeah, I hear you saying, "But you said it was only about three feet high," which is true, but that was the height, not the slope. And, if you remember any of your geometry, you will understand it when I say that the slope was considerable.

So I pushed a ton (or more) of wheeled metal up the hill while my friend kept the truck going straight, which it didn't want to do, and I thought I was going to die. You know Sisyphus?

Yeah, it was like that. Okay, so it wasn't quite like that, but it was like that. All I could see was the back of the truck, the road, and my feet. I had no idea how far I'd gone or how far I had to go. It was just move one foot in front of the other and do not stop.

Why not stop? Because, as we already noted, unless someone was able to step on the brake (and no one was in the truck at this point, remember?), the truck was just going to roll back down again, and I was sure if that happened that I wouldn't be making a second attempt to get that truck up the hill.

So it was one step and one step and one step and sweat dripping everywhere and my shoulder and cheek on the back of the truck, the cool metal on my cheek, and my hands pressing and one step and one step and one step. And breathing. And trying to breathe. And one more step. And not knowing how many more there were but knowing I couldn't stop and one more step. And one more step.

And that is what all this self-publishing stuff is like sometimes. You push and you push, but you can't see how far up the hill you are (you don't even know how long the slope is), but you can't stop -- I've seen people who have stopped -- because you will lose all your momentum, your uphill momentum, and slide back down to where you started and, at best, have to start all over again. All over again. At best. I've seen many people that have not, at least at this point, started again. You have to push and push and keep going and keep going until...

Eventually, some small eternity later, I pushed the truck up onto the top of the hill. The pressure disappeared, and I almost fell down. Then there was running to push the truck down the hill and get it going as fast as possible so that it would coast all the way to the house. Which it may have, I don't remember. What I remember is nearly passing out and laying in a cold sweat on the couch while my friend and his wife asked me if I needed help. When I recovered, and I did recover, I got up and helped move the hunk of metal from the back of the wheeled hunk of metal into the house.

A lot of writing a book, publishing a book, is just like Sisyphus, just like pushing a big rock up a hill all by yourself. If you're lucky, you may have someone that can help you steer your rock (or truck or whatever) so that you, at least, stay on course but not always. At any rate, it all comes down to the hope of hitting the top of the hill so that you can finally quit watching your feet and the ground and take a breath or three. One of the really solid things I've learned, though, since I finished my first book and started this blog is that, once you start, you can't quit. Well, you can, but it frequently will mean that you have to start all over at the beginning again, start gaining momentum all over again. Until you hit that peak (hopefully only the first of many), you have to just keep going, so you have to be prepared to just keep going. One step. One step. One more step.

This post has been brought to you in part by the IWSG and Indie Life.

Putting Yourself Out There (an Indie Life post)

I was never very adept at dating when I was younger. At least, it didn't feel like I was. Maybe it feels like that for everyone? Or most people, at least. There's always this great ambivalence leading up to asking anyone out. Sometimes soul-crushing ambivalence. Doubt. Fear. And, frequently, you just don't do it, because you decide, before you even ask, that the person you want to ask will say "no."

Of course, when I was in high school (and college), all of this was complicated by "The Girl." I was so stuck on her that it made me incapable of seeing other opportunities that were in front of me. And it lasted for YEARS. And it's not like it was some hidden, unrequited thing, either. She knew how I felt and there was pretty consistent pursuit. In fact, any time I would start to get fatigued, she'd do something to keep me hooked without ever going out with me. She very much wanted to make sure that I didn't date anyone else while still not dating me. I came to hate, "I like you, but..." It was... horrible.

But I was completely blinded by her and her unfulfilled promises and it prompted me to completely turn away several girls who were interested in me just for the chance of going out with "The Girl." That and it felt dishonest to go out with someone when I was clearly attracted to someone else. The couple of times I did actually go out with some other girl, I let "The Girl" mess those up. Like I said, she didn't want to date me, per se, but she didn't want me dating someone else, either.

Eventually, though, I did get past her and started asking out some other girls. And, my gosh, the dread of doing that...
There was this one girl... I think I was a freshman in college (pretty sure), and she was, well, she was older than me, like a junior or something. Blond. Pretty. She sat next to me in... Intro to Drama? Maybe. She sat next to me in something, at any rate, and I really wanted to ask her out. I argued with myself over that for weeks. I gave myself all the reasons why I shouldn't ask her:
"She's older than you."
"She's popular."
"Look how pretty she is."
"She'll never say yes to you."

I'm sure there were more, and I'm also sure you get the idea.

At any rate, what it finally came down to for me was this:
If I didn't ask her out, it was the equivalent of a "no." But, if I did ask her out, I might get a "yes." I suppose I couldn't let the possibility slip by, so, one Friday after class when some friends of mine and I were going to hit the local pizza joint, I asked her if she wanted to come along. And...
I did not get a "yes," but I also didn't get a "no." I got a "I can't right now, maybe some other time." And, maybe, that was a "no" and, maybe, it was exactly what it was. I don't know, because I didn't try again. Maybe, I should have; I don't know. The main thing, though, was that I asked her, which I even knew at the time.

That was my thing after that, "If you don't ask [about whatever, not just dating], the answer is always "no." Or to say it the way my mother-in-law used to say it, "Let them say 'no,'" meaning: Don't not ask because you're convinced you'll get a "no." Make them say it.

Of course, I'm not really talking about dating. All of this has to do with what it's like being an independent author. "The Girl" is like that time period where you're stuck on going with a traditional publisher. Most authors go through that and will pursue it for years and years. They'll jump through all kinds of hoops thrown out there by "The Girl," um, I mean Agents. "I like it, but..."
You just need to change these parts.
You just need to write it first person.
You just need to have a love triangle.
blah blah blah
All of that when it's not really about you, anyway. They just want the attention and the power (and I'm not talking about any specific agent; I mean that in a general sense about the way that part of publishing works).

Of course, I could also talk about looking for an agent in the same context of dating, but I'm not going to do that, because I don't think most authors ought to be looking for agents, but that's a post for another time.

What I want to talk about is the whole thing of putting yourself out there. I mean, that's what dating is: putting yourself out there and becoming vulnerable. You risk the big "NO" any time you ask someone out, and that risk is scary, and it never feels good to get it. But you don't always get a "no." I hope.

Putting your book out there is a lot like this. Putting it out there where people can see it and read it is risking the big "No" of bad reviews (and no reviews), no sales, and people responding negatively to you rather than your work. It can be... hard. Scary.

But not putting your stuff out there is the same as not asking. Don't let the fear that people won't like what you have to say keep you from making it available. Let them say "no." And some people will say "no," but some people will say "Yes!" And isn't it those people we're writing for anyway?

This post has been brought to you in part by Indie Life.

The Emotional Lawn (an Indie Life post)

I've never been a big fan of yard work. Evidently, my parents weren't either, because, as a kid, I did the bulk of the yard work. Fortunately, for my kids, we don't have a lawn or, even, much of a yard, and what there is is rocks (because that's what the previous owners had put in rather than have a tiny lawn to tend (and, I have to say, these rocks are terrible. Tiny and red, they get tracked everywhere, because they quite easily get stuck in shoes and stuff)). But, when I was a kid, we had a big yard with lots of trees. And lots of leaves. And I hated raking. More than raking, I hated bagging the leaves. It was the worst.

The yard also had a steep hill down to the sidewalk (on two sides, since we lived on a corner), but, even with the hill, I preferred mowing to raking. Besides, when I mowed, I would mow designs into the yard. Not permanent designs, because, once the yard was mowed, there was no design. But, still, my dad always got pissed when I was doing diagonals and stuff and would yell at me for messing up the grass. Seriously. (And I always wanted to say, "Then you mow it," but I never did.)

In my current "yard," though, even with the rocks, there are weeds. They grow up between the rocks, and it's difficult to get rid of them. For one thing, you can't just go out and mow them down. The last several weeks, I've sort of let the weeds take over, because they were growing up faster than I could pull them out.

And that's what it's like, sometimes, being an indie author. For one thing, you have to tend your own emotional lawn. Those big name authors often have plenty of people to help with theirs, not to mention the fans which will plant plenty of flowers (praise). But indies... well, they get to tend their lawns pretty much on their own.

And it can be tough. You get your book out there, but, really, no one knows who you are, and it doesn't generate the kind of sales you'd hoped for, and you don't get the kinds of reviews you'd hoped for, either in number or quality, or you get that one really bad review that just breaks your heart and makes you wonder what you're doing anyway, and, suddenly, your emotional lawn is full of weeds: resentment, envy, bitterness, even thoughts of revenge. Basically, you have a lawn that's invested in how others treat it. You're allowing people outside of yourself to control what grows in your own emotional lawn.

And, really, why should those other people care what's growing in your lawn?

Even the people that do care, close friends and family, and may try to help you out with the weed pulling ("That bad review doesn't mean anything." "Keep working at it, sales will get better." "Don't worry that <someone else> is doing better than you."), won't keep it up for long if you continue to allow strangers the power to grow weeds in your emotions.

Really, you are the only person that can control what you have growing in your emotional lawn. You have to cultivate grass, an attitude of doing your thing without regard to the outside. You have to tend the grass, work at it, mow it, water it. You do just have to keep working and doing your own thing. And, when you see a weed popping up, you have to go over and pull that sucker up, because they breed like crazy, so you can't let them start.

Why is this important? Because, as an indie author, your lawn is almost as important as your books. Maybe as important. Maybe, even, more important. When you're big and famous (and rich), you can pass almost anything off as just being the product of an eccentric artist-type, but, when you're a little indie guy, how you behave (what your lawn looks like) is a lot of what attracts new readers, so, if you have a ton of weeds (bad behavior and attitude), it won't matter how good your books are, people won't want to come around. (That's why when authors have public meltdowns over bad reviews (or whatever) can ruin their careers before they even get started.)

So, yeah, maintaining your emotional lawn as an indie author is a lot of work. But it's one of those things that has to be done. But, you know, you can always have fun with it and mow in some diagonals, checker boards, or, even, swirls.

This post has been brought to you in part by Indie Life.

Long Hard Times To Come (an Indie Life post)

I'm not sure of the precise reason, but, when I think of the life of the independent author, this is the song that comes to mind. Okay, the actual reason, the apparent reason is a great part of it: "On this lonely road, trying to make it home... I see them long, hard times to come." It really says it all, even if there is more than just that in the song that resonates with me and this path.

The life of the indie writer is a long, hard, lonely road. Well, unless you just get lucky right at the start. Most of us, though, will not get lucky and any success we achieve will come at the end of a long, hard road.

Right now, I am feeling that long, hard road, and it doesn't feel as if I brought enough water along.

But I knew what I was getting into, or onto, when I started this journey; I do not, however, think a lot of writers who choose to go the indie route really know what kind of journey they're starting. At the beginning, there is some hold-your-breath expectation to be one of those lucky few that have the stars align and light your path with gold-showered success as soon as you step onto the path. You learn very quickly, after that, to breathe... or pick yourself up off of the ground after you've passed out.

And the real problem with the indie road is that it's not, yet, well-trod, no matter how many people are on it. The paths of traditional publishing are well established, paved even, not that they are any less long and hard these days. The buses and limos that used to pick authors up along the way on the traditional road are becoming fewer and fewer and more and more authors are being forced to walk that road rather than catching a ride. But, still, it's clearly marked, and it's hard to get lost.

The road for the indie author, though, is more like a big field, a huge field, with people wandering around in it trying to figure out in which direction to go. There are what amounts to game tracks here and there where several authors have gone before, but those paths fade away and become unclear and harder to follow as the terrain becomes rough. We're just out there trying to figure out which way to go, full of questions without answers, so much so that we forget the questions.

This journey's too long, I'm looking for some answers

So much time stressing, I forget the questions

The real issue is that too many people set out without an actual destination, a goal, in mind beyond that vague hope for fame and fortune. Fame and fortune, though, are not a destination. It may happen but not because there's a road that leads there. Not a seen road, anyway; it's more like an unseen highway that may or may not coincide with the road you're on. If you are, in fact, on a road and not just wandering around hoping to find fame and fortune as if you are in an Arkansas diamond field.

So how do you find your way?

Find your mountain. Pick your point on the horizon and go towards it. You don't have to worry about anyone else's path that way. If you find a path that is going in the same direction, great, but, if you find what looks like a great path but it's leading in some other direction, don't take it. Stick to your path, your road, no matter how long and hard it is. The only question is, "What is your mountain?"

Mine, right now, which is only like a foothill in the overall picture, is finishing Brother's Keeper. That's my point on the horizon. Of course, right now, I'm still working my way off of the path that was called Shadow Spinner, and I have to finish crossing that plateau now that I'm on the top before I can start climbing the next hill, but I am ready to start on that next hill.

So, yeah, you climb your first mountain and find out that it was only just a foothill of a much larger mountain, but, you know what, that's okay. That's the way it goes. And you keep climbing. And you keep climbing. And you keep climbing. You make it past each peak, and you keep going, and, one day, you find that you have reached the top, the real top, and you cross over to the other side, the side with all the people, and they see you come across in the sunrise, you who have never been there before, and they look up at you and wonder about your "overnight success," because, remember, you weren't there the day before, and you look down the long, long, slope behind you, you look back at the hills and valleys, all of which you crossed, and you kind of smile because you know how long "overnight" really was. But it's okay, because you're there.

Or maybe not, because, for you, maybe there is another mountain, and you see that the long, hard road keeps going and that there are more "Long Hard Times To Come." But that, too, is okay. You rest a bit, refill your water bottles, and set your feet back on the path and keep going.

(This post has been brought to you, in part, by Indie Life.)

How Does Your Garden Grow? (an Indie Life post)

I haven't spent a lot of time talking about our little mini-garden; at least, not here on the blog, I haven't. It's not really much of a garden, since it's just a planter box, but we did get a ton of tomatoes out of it last year. This year, we expanded the tomatoes into the backyard, too. But I'm not here to talk about tomatoes. Not today, anyway.

One of the things we planted last year was nasturtiums. I think it was because we had some fantasy that we

would use them in salads or something, but, mostly, we never did. I'd throw some flower petals in occasionally but not enough to really count. We skipped planting the nasturtiums this year, but that was because we didn't have to plant them. The above picture is our little nasturtium plot for this year, and, if you can see it up there in the top right corner, they didn't grow in the planter box. No, we had our own little patch of nasturtiums spring up all on their own this year, outside of the box. That's kind of cool, because they are pretty.

As you will notice, the nasturtiums are yellow and orange, which is what we planted last year, yellow and orange nasturtiums. As a big patch of flowers, they are very pretty, but... BUT none of the individual flowers stand out. It's just a bunch of yellow and orange flowers all mixed together. One flower is as good as the next. So let's say I was making a salad and I was going to throw in some flower petals for color, there wouldn't be a lot of thought involved in which nasturtiums to pick. I'd look for the ones that were more freshly bloomed and pick a few.

And that's kind of how choosing books are for a lot of people: What's newly published? What's "freshest"? But, really, it's all the same stuff, so it doesn't really matter. To a large extent, for example, fantasy written today is pretty much the same as fantasy written 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Look back up there at that picture of the flowers. Just orange and yellow nasturtiums. And that's all it was for a while. But, then, inexplicably, we had this:

That, just to be clear, is a red nasturtium. We didn't plant any red nasturtiums. It grew up all on its own. And that's kind of like when something new comes along in the book world. It really stands out against everything else that is just orange and yellow.

Harry Potter is a good example of this. Not that Harry Potter is really all that new, because it still uses many of the familiar fantasy themes: orphaned boy, who finds out he has previously unknown powers, who is the subject of a prophecy. Etc. It's a fairly standard fantasy setup, except for the setting. That's the thing that makes it different. The thing that makes it standout. The thing that makes it red. It's no longer just some apprentice wizard boy with his wizard master; it's a whole school of witches and wizards and it's set today. People stopped to look. "Ooh, look... that one's red."

Which, incidentally, is the same thing that happened with Fifty Shades of Grey. I mean, nothing has changed in romance in, like, ever, but Fifty Shades came along, and it wasn't just the same old yellow or orange flower and, whereas before, no particular book got lots of attention because of that; suddenly, Fifty Shades was the only red flower, and everyone wanted it.

Now, of course, we have lots of red flowers,

which has changed the look of the nasturtium patch somewhat (but only somewhat, as they tend to hide under the leaves more than the orange and yellow flowers), and, now, of course, we have lots of books like Harry Potter, which is not a bad thing. Adding variety is a good thing, and, although a lot of "copycats" can seem antithetical to variety, it does, actually, add variety to the overall landscape of the book world, just as it's done with our flower patch.

Then, we have these that have popped up in the planter box along with the tomatoes:

I'll call these mixing genres, which also produces some pretty flowers (and interesting books). In fact, I actually these are prettier than the red ones, though harder to see from a distance. I mean, I'm not a zombie fan, but even I have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sitting on my teetering stack of books to read.

Often, publishers don't want to take a risk on anything but that's not yellow or orange. They look out at he flower patch and see that everything is yellow and orange and just decide that that's all people will like. But people like variety, and it doesn't always have to be good (see 50 Shades) for people to be attracted to it. The difference is all that matters. Which is not to say that you should give up on quality for being different; I'm just saying don't stick to the same old orange and yellow flowers. Or, even, red, when a lot of that comes along. Don't be... safe.

That's what I've tried to do in my own writing. I like fantasy, but I don't want my stuff to just be the same old fantasy. And, evidently, I like it to be scary, because a lot of people call what I write horror, especially Shadow Spinner, but, you know, I'm okay with that, because I don't want anyone to read this and think, "Well, this was okay, but I already read this book." [Which is what I think of anytime anyone starts talking about how great Martin is, because I already read that story except it was called The Sword of Truth and, before that, it was called The Wheel of Time, and, before that, it was called...] So, you know, write what you like, but put your own twist on it. Make it yours.

Be the red flower.

This post has been brought to you in part by Indie Life.

The Rewards of Failure (an Indie Life post)

As I've mentioned before, I had a non-standard educational experience. At least, it was non-standard for when I was in school. Much of the experimental stuff they did with us when I was in school is standard now. We were part of what they called a "pilot program" to see if what they did with us would work on a broader scale. Yes, I was a guinea pig, me and my friends.

The specific thing I want to talk about right now is algebra. When I was a kid, the belief was that algebra was a high school specific class. Kids younger than about 15 just could not understand it or retain it, so it wasn't taught below the high school level. My friend "Parker" and I presented them with some amount of difficulty, though. Here's a rundown:

1. Sometime after Christmas during the fourth grade, our teacher took the two of us aside and told us that she had nothing she could teach us; it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the class. Therefore, she gave us our math books and told us to just do whatever. We finished that math book almost immediately. She gave us the fifth grade math book. We worked through that one, turning in the assignments (all of them) as we went. We finished that one. She gave us the sixth grade math book, and we did the same to it. She dug up some alternate sixth grade text book, and we started to work on  that one, but, alas, school ended. We did all of that within a few months.
2. We were moved to a different school for fifth grade, one with a brand new special program for kids like us from all over the Parish (this was in Louisiana, not a Catholic thing). However, they still didn't know what to do with the two of us in regards to math because we were so much more advanced than any of the other kids. So they, um, just stuck us in the sixth grade math class, which didn't win us any friends, because we had to be singled out of the class, a couple of fifth graders, and given special work that none of the other kids could do. Mostly, though, we were just left to ourselves, because, again, the teacher didn't have time to spend on just two kids with special needs (it sounds bad when I say it like that, doesn't it?).
3. For sixth grade, they brought in a special teacher for us and grouped us with the other sixth graders in the special program we were in. They, also, were too advanced for the regular sixth grade math class. We worked through a couple of seventh grade math books but, still, no algebra.
4. Things changed, again, for seventh grade. There was a restructuring of the entire education system in Caddo Parish (maybe all of Louisiana, but I don't know about that). Sixth grade was moved from elementary school to middle school (in fact, it was that year that they switched from calling them "junior highs" to "middle schools") and a new middle school was opened, a Magnet school (following a couple of years behind the opening of the Magnet high school (the first one in the state and one of the first in the country)). The program we were in was going to be located at the Magnet school, and they were going to try us (all of us in the Gateway program) in pre-algebra.
5. Eighth grade. They were going to try for the very first time (at least, in Louisiana; I don't know about anywhere else) teaching algebra to middle schoolers. One special class of eighth grade algebra students in the whole of Louisiana. And this is where it gets interesting and is the point of all of this.

See, there was a catch to this special, trial algebra class. Not only did we have to pass the class for it to count for high school credit, we had to pass an algebra proficiency test at the end of the year to show that we had retained enough of the information for it to count as high school credit. Otherwise? Well, otherwise, for anyone not passing the test, algebra would have to be retaken. No one thought much of that test during the school year. Standardized tests were easy, right? I mean, we were a group of about 30 high achieving students and standardized tests were... snacks.

The test took place on a Saturday after school had ended for the year. Yes, we had to go take a test during summer break. [But, then, my creative writing class was horrified recently to learn that I had assigned summer reading, too, so taking a test during the summer wasn't that big a deal, I guess.] A couple or few weeks later, I got the results in the mail. I had passed. But, not only had I passed, I had aced the test. Not a single incorrect answer. "Parker" was the same.

Then we got the call. I know about the call, because I was the one that answered the phone, and my parents weren't home, so they just talked to me about it. In retrospect, I'm not sure how wise it was for them to talk to a 14-year-old about all of this, but it is what they did. As it turned out, not only were "Parker" and I the only two students to get 100% on the test, we were the only two students that passed the test. Which is not what they called to tell me, not exactly, anyway. No, what they called to tell me, so that I would not be upset about it, is that they had decided that they were going to throw out the test and just go off of the class grades to determine who would get algebra credit and go on to geometry. They were worried that I would find out that other people had not passed the test and, yet, were in geometry with me, and they didn't want me (or "Parker") making an issue of it. They didn't want us to talk about it.

Fortunately for them, at the time, I didn't much care and just shrugged it off with a "sure, I won't talk about it or tell anyone my test scores" (except for "Parker," because he and I had already communicated about it, so, when they told me I was one of only two kids to pass the test, I knew the other one was "Parker" without them having to tell me anything else). Since then, though, I've developed quite a bit of ambivalence over the whole situation.

On the one hand, I understand the "everyone failed; our standards must have been too high" mentality. We just dealt with a similar kind of thing with my oldest son in his history class. There was an essay assignment with a fairly specific instruction set. If any particular student did not follow the instructions, s/he received a 0 on the assignment. That's pretty hardcore, but I understand that. So my son's classmates started getting their papers back, and everyone was getting a 0. Everyone. That went on until everyone had gotten their papers back... everyone except my son. All 0s. My son was kind of freaking out, especially since it took nearly two months for him to get his paper back. I can only assume it was because the teacher actually had to read and grade my son's essay, because he was the only one in the classroom to follow the instructions. He got a 95. Not just the only "A" in the class, but the only grade that wasn't a 0. So, on the one hand, I have to think the teacher wasn't quite doing his job if more than 95% of the class failed at the task. On the other hand, if my son can follow the instructions, a boy who can't remember from week to week where to put the trash cans when he moves them down to the curb for pick up, any of those students should have been able to follow the instructions. So, you know, I get the board (or whoever it was making the decision about the algebra class) deciding to do away with the test and just going with the class grades.

But, on the other hand, I have an issue with lowering the bar to meet the standards of failure. It was made clear to us going in that we had to both pass the class and pass the test to get credit, so it seems wrong on some fundamental level to shrug and say, "oh, well" and allow in everyone that only passed the class. Which is not to say that I know what they should have done instead. Maybe, the test was too hard; I don't know.

All of this does remind me of the current state of independent publishing, though. Which is not to say that I think we should go back to the artificial gatekeepers of traditional publishing; I certainly don't. I do think that we've adopted an attitude of accepting failure as normal, though. As a community of independently published authors, I think that is totally what we've done. Part of it is because we've, basically, decided that no one should fail because, if people were to fail, nearly everyone would fail. We've lowered the bar to meet the standards of failure. We've lowered it so far that in many cases it not even okay to say, "Hey, this doesn't measure up. You need to learn to spell and punctuate or you need to hire a (good) editor."

Here's the thing: While it's true that some of those kids that were passed up into geometry did just fine and went on successfully through their math classes, many of those kids also failed the geometry course and, because of that, failed out of the school completely (about half of the freshman class each year failed to maintain the requisite GPA to stay in the school). If those kids had been required to re-take the algebra class, not only may they have been successful in geometry when they got to it, but they may have also been able to keep a GPA that would have allowed them to continue on at the Magnet school.

In the same way, if we would have the strength or courage or whatever it is we are generally lacking in the self publishing world to say to some of these authors who are throwing their... efforts... out into the world via the Kindle (and I say Kindle, because that's where most of them go, but, you know, whatever platform), "Hey, this piece of work fails the grammar test; you need to go back to work on it," or "Your story structure in this piece is really rather flat; maybe, you should spend some time study the way a plot works," or, just in general, pointing out where work needs to be done, well, maybe, more of these people would start putting out stories that "pass the test."

Really, this world of independent publishing is not like the algebra class thing in that, if you failed the class, it only affected you. However, pumping the indie world with works that don't pass reflect badly on all indie authors. In that, we should stand up and say, "Hey, we want people to respect indie publishing, so take this back until it's ready."

And, sure, I hear a lot of you getting ready to tell me how subjective it all is, but, when it comes to grammar and punctuation, it's not subjective, and, as a writer, if you can't learn to actually do the math, so to speak, you need to go back and take that algebra class again. Or get someone that can do it to help you out. That's all there is to it, really, because it doesn't matter how good your story is if people can't find it due to the piss poor writing.

So... I know it seems somehow kinder when we just cheer everyone on and tell each other what an amazing job we're all doing, but that kind of thing just brings us all down in the end. It lowers the bar until failure is success, at least to us. All those other people looking in from the outside just see a pile of steaming crap. Raising that bar up above the fumes helps us all. It lets other people know that there is something valuable in indie publishing. There is good to be found there. And helps those beneath the bar to become stronger writers as they strive to "pass the test."

This post has been brought to you by Indie Life.

How To Be... an Incredible Hulk (and an Indie Life post)

Okay, so this entry may seem like an odd choice (my wife totally disapproves of it), BUT, if you follow along to the very end, it will all make sense. Probably. I think it will. It does in my mind, anyway. Besides, in a comment back on this post, Rusty said that growing up to be the Incredible Hulk

was his childhood dream, and I felt like that deserved some recognition. I wanted to dig up old bones; he wanted to "turn into an enormous green rage monster."

But how would one really go about doing that?

Well, my first bit of advice is to be the age of a middle schooler. They have the whole flying into a rage monster thing down. Most of us grow out of that, though, so what other way would one have of becoming a Hulk?

Well, in pretty much every version of the Hulk out there, the first thing you need to have is some pretty serious anger issues, ideally that you're suppressing. For some reason, gamma radiation will release this suppressed anger while also turning you green. Unless you become the a red hulk.

But, then, I'm not actually sure they used gamma radiation on those, so let's just stick to green. Which takes us back to gamma radiation, which is the second necessary ingredient to Hulkify yourself.

Originally, this gamma radiation was delivered via a gamma nuke, but I don't suggest this as your option. Also, it turned him grey

which isn't as impressive in that he looks more gorilla-ish, but he does dress better. Sometimes. But I digress...

More recent iterations of the Hulk have included such things as genetics research and bioengineering, and, honestly, those things put the idea of something Hulk-like into the realm of possibility. We are already working on programs to produce results like this. Okay, maybe now quite like busting out of your clothes and turning colors, but still...

At any rate, if you really want to be the Hulk or Hulk-like, I would bet there are plenty of programs that you could volunteer to join for "testing." I'm sure there will be a lot of paperwork to fill out. Mostly paperwork involving non-disclosure agreements and, um, whatever those things are called where you don't hold the other people responsible when you burst into a green rage monster.
There may also be private individuals who would not need you to sign all of that messy paperwork.

The point is that, if this is something you really wanted to achieve, it's not out of the realm of possibility anymore.

This is also an Indie Life day.

People seem to always want something for nothing, and I get that. I do. Free is good, right? But that's not really what I'm talking about, because free implies that the giver is making a gesture. It's his choice. No, what I'm talking about is when people work the system to take advantage of a situation to get something for nothing.

For a while, Amazon allowed, through it's affiliate program, people to get something for nothing. Just by listing the daily free Kindle listings on their site, an affiliate could earn money from downloads that Amazon wasn't making any money off of. It went on for quite a while before Amazon put a stop to it. The thing that gets me about this is that these people that were taking advantage of what was basically an oversight on the part of Amazon began complaining as soon as Amazon said it would no longer pay affiliates for free downloads. Basically, if we don't make any money from it, you don't make any money from it. I don't see anything wrong with that.

A lot of these people that run these sites advertising free books have been yelling very loudly, though, not that it's doing them any good. Personally, I just don't understand how anyone can feel justified in complaining about not getting something anymore that they were, in effect, stealing to begin with, but they are.

To make up for this lack of income, many of these sites want to, now, charge the author for these services, services that many authors didn't know they were receiving in the first place. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with this; my issue is the way some of these sites are going about it. They want you to have a free offering (to pull in clicks) and a paid option which will earn them affiliate money from Amazon. In effect, they want to be paid from both sides at once. And, maybe, that's okay, it's the way some of these sites are going about it that bothers me along with the fees they want to charge the authors for the service.

Which is how this applies to Indie Life. It's important, as an independently published author, to not get roped into paying more for a service than you're going to get back from using it, and most of these kind of sites are going to do just that, charge you more for the service than you will make from it. Sometimes much more. So what I'm saying here is "be careful." Before you spend any money to promote your book, make sure you do a full evaluation of the service. What kind of traffic do they get? What kind of experience have other authors had? Are they upfront with you and will they answer your questions?

I've gotten pretty used to seeing authors posting about how they spent $50-60 to promote on one of these types of sites for a day and how they only made $10 from it. There's no way to cut that so that it's good for you as the author. Don't be roped in by promises of increasing your visibility or broadening your reader base if your just feeding someone else's thirst for free money. At that point, you may as well be working with a vanity press.

Remember, the money should flow to the author, not from the author.

The Danger of Desperation (an Indie Life post)

For those of you who haven't noticed, there's been a big to-do in the publishing world in the last week or so. But, before that...

It can be difficult to be involved in artistic fields. There's so much angst over whether you're good enough, whether people will like your work, whether people will like you. It creates a huge drive for recognition. Confirmation. Validation. The desire for validation can be... distracting. The desire to be validated, to be told, "yes, you are good," can become the goal rather than doing the art. The need for an agent, for a publisher, more important than doing the writing and just making it available.

This need, this desperate grasp for someone unconnected to you to tell you that you're good, that you do good work, that your writing (art, music, whatever) deserves to be seen can make us do, well, stupid things. It can make us agree to things that our sane, rational minds would have us run away from. But, in that moment, that moment of someone saying to you, "we want you," you can forget to look at the situation and, instead, just say "yes! yes! yes!"

I've kind of lost track of the number of authors I've seen that have signed with some small publisher that said "we want you" but, then, left them to do all the work (editing, cover, marketing) only to keep a large part of any money that was made. And all of that with no advance. But the validation has been so important that many of them don't care. Or they do end up caring and regret the decision to go with the small publisher. It's a hard thing to deal with. And many small publishers count on that. Some of them even demand money from you.

But, then, most of us are at least somewhat aware of vanity presses and know to stay away from them, right? Right? Well, let's just be safe: if any publisher ever asks you for money to publish your book, don't just say "no;" run away as fast as you can, too.

Which brings us to the whole "to-do."

Just recently, Random House has established some new digital-only imprints. These imprints have been designed to take advantage of the new digital era but, from all appearances, at the expense of the author. The imprints seem to be specifically targeting new authors and pre-published authors. Authors who don't know their way around the publishing world. See, the big publishers almost never take unsolicited manuscripts; that means you have to have an agent if you want to get published by someone like Random House. But these new imprints? No agent needed. Anyone can submit to them.

And that one thing is going to be a huge draw for unpublished authors -- the chance to be published by one of the "big 6" without the need of an agent.
And Random House is set up to accept as many takers as possible, because, why?, it's digital only, remember?

You know that saying about when something is too good to be true...?
Yes, there is a catch... actually, there are a lot of them. All of them designed to squeeze the unsuspecting author like a grape.

1. No advance.
2. They charge back to the author all of the production costs. No, you don't have to pay anything up front, but all of the costs of editing, cover design, marketing; it all comes out of the pocket of the author.
3. They get to own your soul. Seriously. They own all rights to your work in every possible format in place you can think of. Well, at least, any place on Earth. They own all licensing options. AND they own the crack at any sequel you may ever write.
4. If your book is successful enough that they decide they want to do a print version of it, you get charged for all of that, too.

The whole thing is horrendous. If you really want to know the whole story, I suggest you read the following posts by John Scalzi, who also happens to be the president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America:
1. Hydra
2. Alibi
3. The direction?
4. The Letter
5. The Response
6. Why advance are important
7. You have more power than you think

Look, I understand that it can seem a small thing to take terms that don't include an advance or any of these other things when you're trying to get in the door. After all, you're already not making anything, right? What can it hurt, and, at least, this way you have a chance. Right? And with a big publisher, too! But don't let your desperation lead you down the path of foolishness. Don't feed the big parasitic organism that's seeking to drain you of all of your creativity. In the end, it's just not worth it, no matter how "necessary" it may seem at the time. Desperation... it's a dangerous thing.

I strongly suggest that you go read those posts by Scalzi. Yeah, that's a lot of reading, but you'll be glad you did.

Update:
Random House, due to the huge outcry against the terms they were offering through these new imprints, has responded by amending  the terms they're offering in their contracts. What they're offering is still not great, but it's better than it was. You can read about the changes here and Scalzi's thoughts on them here. Again, this is strongly suggested reading.

This post has been brought to you by Indie Life.

So You Wrote a Book...(an Indie Life post)

This post is a part of Indie Life. You can find out more about it here.

Well, I don't know if you wrote a book or if you're still working on it or, maybe, you're not working on one at all and just like to stop by and read my stuff. Whatever the case, today's post is related to what it's like to be an independently published author, because that's what Indie Life is about.

Writing is hard. Wait, no, writing is easy. Writing a book is hard. Up to the point in my life when I wrote my first book, it was the hardest thing I had done. I think I thought it would get easier after that, but, no, all the stuff you have to do with your book once you finish writing it is much more difficult than actually writing the book. Which is hard; I mentioned that, right? Most of that other stuff would fall under the heading of "marketing." Let's call it what it is: selling. Selling your book is much more difficult than writing it. Well, for most of us writer people, at any rate. Let's face it, selling takes a certain amount of extrovertedness, and most of us writers don't fall into that category, so trying to convince someone else to read the book you just wrote isn't the easiest thing (for us) to do. That's why we need those people that are good at that stuff, except, when you're doing this stuff on your own, you don't have access to those people. Generally speaking.

Not that those people necessarily do that great a job, because knowing what's going to be appealing to other people is a lot of guess work, so there's a lot of variability in it. But, hey, at least it wouldn't be me doing it (which is why it's my (not so) secret dream to be able to hire someone else to do the marketing of my novels and stories and tall tales). But all of that is kind of beside the point.

The point is this:
There are tons of ways to go about bringing attention to your work. There are people that will tell you two dozen "best" ways to do it. You have to be here. You have to go there. You have to be on this. Or on that. Or drinking a soda while standing on your head. Or walking around with an egg clenched in your butt cheeks. Hm, well, maybe that last one would work. Heck, I'd at least look into what kind of stuff you write if you used an egg like that as a marketing tool. The point is that everyone, EVERYONE, will tell you something different.

And, so, how do you choose?

You don't. You want to know why? I mean, do you really want to know why? You're not a marketer. Not a seller. That's not your job.

Oh, yeah, okay, I hear you. "But how will anyone ever know about my book if I don't get out there and sell it?" And I hear, "Well, you have a blog!" And I hear all sorts of other things most of them starting with "But!" So, yeah, I'm not saying to do nothing; I'm just saying that you shouldn't let the selling of your book become THE priority of your life. Especially if all you have is just the one book.
It's not your job.

Did you become a writer just so you'd get the chance to do some marketing? No, I didn't think so. [And, if you did, you can come market my book for me and skip all of that writing stuff. See what I mean?] You became a writer because you wanted to write, and that's what you need to be doing. Primarily.

Let's take a peek at the numbers. I wrote my first draft of The House on the Corner in about six months. That was 125,000 words. Yeah, it's a longish book. I spent another six months working on it after that and cutting the word count to all of 120,000 words. In the two years since then, the two years I've been blogging, I've only done a little over 100,000 words of fiction writing. See, the blogging takes a considerable amount of time and a lot of my words. Granted, I've written way more in total considering that I have something around 300,000 words of blog entries, but, still, the marketing has taken away from the writing.

Which is not to say that it's not necessary, because some amount of putting yourself out there for people to find (beyond just sticking your work on Amazon) is absolutely necessary. However, the best way to market your work, and the way that no one in marketing is likely to tell you about, is to go and write another book. Seriously. The greater your body of work, the more seriously readers will take you as a writer and the more likely they are to buy your books. So, as it turns out, your best marketing tool is to do the thing you want to do anyway: write.

So... what are you waiting for? Go write! Do it! Now!
Oh, but, um, first, go read my book! Trust me, you want to. Because that's the kind of seller I am. Now, excuse me. I have some writing I need to go do.

The Serial Experiment

When I was a kid, I had this cousin... no, wait, I still have the cousin, even if I haven't seen him in more than 20 years. Let's try again:

When my cousin was a kid, actually, when he was a baby, his mother (that makes her my aunt) had trouble getting him to eat his baby food. He would do that baby tongue thing and just push it all out of his mouth. It didn't matter what flavor it was, he just wouldn't eat the baby food. Somewhere in trying to get him to eat, they discovered that he liked ketchup, so my aunt took to mixing it in his baby food to get him to eat it. Growing up, my cousin thought ketchup went on everything.

I mean that. When we'd all be down at my grandparents for the holidays, say, Thanksgiving, he'd get his plate of food and pour ketchup over everything on the plate. On the turkey and the ham. On the mashed potatoes and green beans. On the dressing (also known as stuffing for those of you that don't know what dressing is, except they're not really the same thing) and the sweet potatoes. The only thing that didn't get ketchup was the pie. This was just how he ate, and everyone was (mostly) used to it.

Until one Saturday morning when he and I and another of our cousins were down at my great-grandmother's house. One of the few things that didn't get ketchup (other than pie) was cereal. Except, on that particular Saturday morning, he decided he was going to put ketchup on his cereal. Yes, my other cousin and I were entirely grossed out by this idea, and my other cousin tried to pull rank because she was the oldest of us (and could also beat him up at need) and threatened him all the way to Sunday (which was only  the next day, so I guess it wasn't that big a deal) about the ketchup, but he wouldn't be dissuaded.

Finally, the bargain was struck that if he put ketchup on the cereal that he would eat it no matter what, that he would not under any circumstances leave the table until the bowl of cereal was consumed. She was going to sit there and not let him up until he ate every last bite. He had no doubt that he would eat the cereal, so he made the deal readily enough.

I wish I could remember what kind of cereal it was, but I don't, but that's only secondary to what happened next. See, the ketchup went on, and the milk started turning pink. And so did the cereal. In fact, it turned into a bowl of pink mush. My cousin wouldn't eat it. He did manage to try it, but it was as gross as it looked, like a lumpy bowl of Pepto-Bismol.

We sat at that table for a long time. A very long time. It was one of the few times in my life that I remember being bored. But my female cousin wouldn't let my male cousin up from the table. We all just sat there being completely miserable. And, then, we sat some more. My cousin, the ketchup eater, outlasted the enforcer. That was probably somewhat due to me and the fact that I kept saying, "Let's go..." I told you, I was bored. Finally, FINALLY, we, the girl and I, left. We left Mr. Ketchup sitting there with his bowl of... whatever it was with strict instructions that he was not to leave the table until he's eaten every single bit of that cereal.

Yeah, right.

He hid the bowl, joined us just a few minutes later, and convinced my cousin that he'd eaten the cereal. He his the bowl really well, too, because she went back to check; she even looked under the table, and she ended up being convinced. The ironic thing there is that the bowl was under the table, just not on the floor. Later, Ketchup Lad and I sneaked back in and retrieved the bowl of cereal and dumped it for the dogs. These were farm dogs used to eating just about any kind of leftover you can imagine.
They didn't eat that cereal.

Welcome to my first post for Indie Life. Just click the link to find out more.

At this point, you might be wondering what that story has to do with being an "indie" publisher. You wouldn't be wrong to wonder that. It all has to do with experimenting with serials. Actually, it has more to do with the willingness to experiment. My cousin had these two things that he loved: ketchup and cereal, and he decided he needed to try the two together. It didn't work out for him, but he was willing to give it a try. He was willing to give it a try even though he was being told not to do it, that he was crazy, and it was just gross. Okay, so it was gross, but we didn't actually know that until after he tried it. My cousin learned a valuable lesson that day: ketchup doesn't go with everything.

As I was working on my second book, Shadow Spinner, I came across an article that stated  in no uncertain terms that serialized works are dead and that no one should attempt it. I wondered why. Many of our greatest author published many of their greatest works in serial form, and, with our growing fascination with things that are short, serialization seemed to me like it might be something to experiment with. I decided that I would start releasing Shadow Spinner a chapter at a time to see what would happen. The experiment isn't over, yet, but I think it's going well. Actually, I know it is.

And! AND! After I started releasing Spinner serially, Amazon started up its own serial arm of its publishing business. Amazon believes that serializations may be the wave of the future as far as book publishing goes. I was too late to with Spinner to get into that without removing everything I'd already released and starting over, which I didn't want to do, but I do have another idea for a different serial when I finish with this one, and I will try out their serial branch when I get to that one. Only without the ketchup.

The point is... the point is don't be scared to try new things, especially if you're just starting out. Sure, they might not all work, but you'll know what not to do next time, right? And you might just discover the next big thing, like peanut butter and peppermint. Okay, so that's still not big, but my kids swear to me that it's going to be.